I hope nobody is surprised by this. It’s the exact same story every time: talk tough, claim that there’s “no common ground” for weeks, then cave at the last minute and say that standing your ground would have been disastrous.

Hey Boehner, why don't you just attach all the Assault Weapons Ban and all the other gun control that Obama wants to the bill and call it a twofer cave?!?( ...uhhh maybe I should be giving him any ideas....)

Some were saying give Obama what he wants and he owns it. So now he is giving Pelosi what she wants. Maybe he thinks he will pit the two against each other and triangulate? He really could be that stupid.

Not sure what the difference is between what Pelosi and Obama want anyway. They both want our wallets, bank accounts, 401ks and everything else. I am numb and beyond caring about this crap anymore. I am just watching this train wreck unfold

Hey Boehner, why don’t you just attach the Assault Weapons ban and all the other gun control the dems are clamoring for and make it a total cave in!! (on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be giving him any ideas...)

The Republicans are walking in a mine field here. They could be facing the destruction of the party now on TWO fronts..... The “Fiscal Cliff” mess, and now GUN CONTROL.... The dems and the liberals in the media have to be smelling ‘blood in the water’. The House leadership had best be VERY careful here......

My preference would be for Republican Leadership to stop Obama in his tracks. Well, that's not going to happen. We lost the election, and we don't have the power.

My second preference would be for Boehner to stand up and say, "Obama's policies are a disaster. They will destroy the country. But we lost the election. We will not stand in his way. The House Republicans will vote 'present' and we will all see the world that Obama wants us to live in."

But it looks like I'm stuck with my least favorite option: Boehner compromising with Pelosi, giving Obama anything he wants and settign Republicans up to say "If anything goes wrong with this plan, you can blame us."

I am so sick of hearing that Boehner’s in a hard place, or he doesn’t have much leverage.

Sure, he can’t get through tax cuts or even extensions of the Bush tax cuts without Democrat support. But his GOP House could stop the overspending in a minute if the had the whatevers to do so.

They’d claim that they get crucified in the MSM and only have control over a ‘sixth’ of the government. But they’ve the majority, including their most resolute members, in the one chamber with the best power to put a break on spending.

That they haven’t, don’t and won’t do so is criminal negligence on their part.

If they can’t get their message across to the electorate, then they should seek the help they need for better messaging. I don’t think anyone here could reasonably claim that they a) are effective, or b) even bother to make much effort to get their message across. They even have a baseline of polls showing a super-majority of voters backing spending cuts, which is more than those who back tax increases.

Yes, you can say that everyone backs cuts in the abstract, but they object to cuts in the specific. Still, the GOP has two years to govern according to their principles before and whether they have the opportunity for reelection. And, again, the GOP have done nothing effective in terms of communication since a brief moment with Gingrich and then Reagan before him. The tea party success was overwhelmingly outside of and despite the GOP party apparatus.

Once again the Republicans give the freeloading democrat base a pass, and royally stick it to the tax slaves. There's no difference between parties other than the democrats just move faster. The Republicans move slower. Both go in the same direction.

Good cop/Bad cop. More power and privilege for themselves, more enslavement and oppression for us.

“..given the shenanigans and the fraud of the last election...I don’t think it means very much anymore. These guys are operating with a gun to their head-....and We the People are letting them get away with it....

36
posted on 12/18/2012 9:09:37 AM PST
by mo
(If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)

I am so sick of hearing that Boehners in a hard place, or he doesnt have much leverage.

Same here. Boehner has the only leverage that counts - raising the debt ceiling. It is the only thing - I meant the ONLY thing - that matters to Obama. Yet Boehner surrenders it first.

I still cringe when I think back sixteen months ago. Boehner caved then as well by raising the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion. And he got zero in return. ZERO! The best thing Boehner can do at this point for the sake of the country is to hold the debt ceiling where it is and let Obama fend for every single dollar he wants to spend. Only then will America wake up to what is going on.

43
posted on 12/18/2012 9:13:22 AM PST
by Hoodat
("As for God, His way is perfect" - Psalm 18:30)

"Could we possibly get a LEADER, who doesnt have a trail of blackmail pictures, littering his past? There is no other explanation for caving."

Part of it, I think, is that we are being taken advantage once again by the same old, duplicitous GOP consultants. They cook their internal polls to show that any Conservative position is "greatly unpopular" with the public, and unsuspecting House leaders rely on this data, so they quickly cave.

They paint Conservatives as extremists who only harm the party, creating a bubble world in which there is even more reliance on the "helpful" consultants. The consultants get paid, win or lose; the politician keeps quiet because he doesn't want to admit he made a mistake in overpaying for bad advice, and the cycle continues.

49
posted on 12/18/2012 9:15:45 AM PST
by Qbert
("The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry" - William F. Buckley, Jr.)

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